“So what?” What do you mean, “so what?”

The entertainment market is flooded with amateur engineers promoting low cost recordings using cracked copies of Cubase at make-shift home studios. Seasoned artists are finding themselves lost among the millions and millions of band listings, half of which still need a good year or two (or five) to home in on their chops. While social media flipped the tables on music and audio engineering promotion, it’s also removed some of the industries best gatekeepers - those that weed out the chatter and surface the best of the best.

So the mainstream industry did get a bit carried away, but the independent music biz has always (and will always) thrive. And thus, years later, you find yourself feeling like a chump while you spend countless hours using MySpace friend adders to grow a potential fan base. Studios have been using auto-friend adding software to ping every band in the entire MySpace network. But do the friend adders work anymore? Even if you make it through the maze of captchas, does this form of advertising have a positive or negative effect on your brand?

Enter MySpace’s new ad network. Using the ad network, you can quickly create a ad to promote your services, music, or events, much like you already do by posting bulletins and add new friends to your space. However, the ad network allows you to select the target demographic for your ad and places your graphic tastefully on the pages of those that are most likely to be interested. The bonus is, you get plenty of exposure for your band, studio, or personal brand, but you only pay when users click on the ad. The payment is usually between 50-75 cents a click, but at least it’s a click from someone that is interested in what you have to offer. If you are on a budget, you can indicate your maximum budget and your campaign will automatically pause once your allotment is spent.

MySpace’s ad network follows the format that was original developed by Facebook (see “ad preview” example), which is another quality network when seeking to introduce yourself to potential clients and fans (and is far better than MySpace’s current offering). If you are a band with a upcoming indie rock event, start an ad that only appears on the pages of indie rock lovers from the city you are holding the event. If you are a live sound engineer, start an ad that only appears on the pages of music venue owners, bookers, and touring band pages.

If you try it out, consider the following when creating your campaign:

1. Contribute to a positive experience for the user by following the rules of design (Google it). Create a graphic that is enticing, not obnoxious.  If your not good with design, find a good image that represents your project and use it in the place of a graphic layout.
2. Be mindful of your demographic. If you are an engineer that works best with country artists, advertise to country artists. It’s likely that, even if you get them on the line, a punk band will  not select you for their recording project, so why waste their time.This is about quality, not quantity.
3. Be honest. “The Best Show of the Year” isn’t an accurate headline… unless you are Robert Plant and about to play a reunion show with Led Zeppelin. If it’s a dance party, don’t be afraid to call it a dance party.
4. If you are an engineer, don’t advertise for services that you are not equipped to support. If you are working at a recording studio, do not advertise mastering services if you do not have a mastering facility. Think about partnering with a mastering studio so you can send business each way.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.